Small Victorian houses converted into shops sit right behind the city's downtown towers.
What Yorkville looks like
Small Victorian houses along Yorkville Avenue and Cumberland Street now hold boutiques and galleries instead of homes. Condo and office towers rise directly behind their rooflines, visible from the sidewalk in front of almost every one.
On Hazelton Avenue, a turreted stone house holds the , a bronze sculpture standing on the sidewalk by its door. A block over on Yorkville Avenue, a small stone and brick house sits squeezed between two much taller buildings. Wrought iron lampposts and hanging flower baskets line the brick sidewalks between them.
was built as a hospital in 1923. Its original facade now holds a Chanel storefront, a glass tower rising behind it. The keeps its 1927 stone front on St. Thomas Street, a condo tower rising directly behind that one too. The 's Art Deco tower sits at the corner of Bloor Street and Avenue Road.
runs along Cumberland Street between the shops and the office towers behind it. The park is broken into eleven small garden plots, each a slightly different size and planting. A slab of granite trucked down from the Canadian Shield sits on a raised cobblestone plaza, with a grid of Scots pines standing in a ring nearby.
A block over, a small variety store holds its corner beside a parking lot, with condo and office towers rising on every side. , a shopping mall from the 1970s, sits empty on Cumberland Street.
Shot in Yorkville
The Windsor Arms Hotel on St. Thomas Street held a scene for The Paper Chase in 1973. It held one for Chloe in 2009. The Park Hyatt, at Bloor and Avenue Road, was used repeatedly for the Crave series Heated Rivalry in 2025. Its restaurant, Joni, hosted a post awards party scene. Its Presidential Suite became the apartment one hockey player lets his teammate move into.
Christopher's Movie Matinée, 1968
Played Yorkville's hippie coffeehouse strip
The National Film Board sent director Mort Ransen to Yorkville Avenue to film the neighborhood's hippie coffeehouse scene, letting the teenagers help make it rather than only appearing in it. The film follows them along the street and inside its coffeehouses through the summer of 1967.
The Paper Chase, 1973
The Windsor Arms Hotel
Played Hart's hotel room
A hotel room study session for law student Hart and a classmate was filmed at the Windsor Arms during the production's shoot in the fall of 1972. The 1927 hotel stands rebuilt today as a condo hotel, keeping its original St. Thomas Street facade.
Chloe, 2009
Played A hotel scene in Chloe
The hotel's own account of its filming history lists Chloe among the productions that shot there. The Windsor Arms also hosted the founding of the Toronto International Film Festival in 1976.
Old Town's high Victorian cottages, built in the 1870s and raised over street level storage, now hold boutiques and cafes on Wells Street. Luxury condo towers rise close behind the block, the same low building against a glass tower that Yorkville plays every day. Frame tight on one cottage and its awning to keep the newer towers a few doors down from crowding the shot. Try searching Victorian cottage boutiques now.
The Rocks keeps its stone terraces and colonial buildings from the 1870s to the 1900s, with the office towers of the Sydney CBD standing close behind several of the blocks. A camera on George Street can hold a low sandstone building and a glass tower in the same frame much the way Yorkville Avenue does. Keep the Harbour Bridge and the water out of frame, since neither has anything like them in Yorkville. Try searching sandstone terraces glass towers now.
Yaletown's brick warehouses date from the 1880s and 1890s. Condo towers now stand directly behind them, and many hold restaurants and design shops on the ground floor. Keep the frame low and wide to match Yorkville's smaller scale, since Yaletown's blocks read taller and boxier close up. Try searching brick warehouses condo towers now.
